We received this from Lizzie: Another one to the list of people who are successfully reducing their symptoms 🙂
Hi Michael,
Now into my fourth month of taking the supplements. Feeling great. Lots of energy, no dizzy spells and a clear head. Still have the tinnitus and poor hearing in my right ear but these are very definitely at livable levels. Am also finding that I don’t need to be quite so careful with the salt intake. Of course, I am careful most of the time but if I have a meal out for example I don’t notice it. I can also enjoy a glass of wine now!
Here’s a funny thing: I normally eat mostly a vegetarian diet as my partner is vegetarian but lately I’ve been really craving meat and fish. Maybe my body needs the extra protein as part of the healing process?
Many thanks
Lizzie
Read other messages and success stories from Meniere’s sufferers here: Success Stories
“Aussie bids to crack middle ear disease. Meniere’s Laboratory in Sydney Paves The Way for Research”
From http://news.ninemsn.com.au
It’s time to pull the mysterious “dizzy terror” which afflicts at least 50,000 Australians out of medical science’s too hard basket, an Australian researcher says.
Dr Daniel Brown, a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Sydney’s Medical School, heads the world’s first research facility solely dedicated to finding the cause and a cure for Meniere’s Disease.
The debilitating condition of the middle ear has been baffling scientists since it was first described by French physician Prosper Meniere in 1861.
Its cause remains unclear – genetic, hormonal or even a viral trigger for fluid or pressure fluctuations within the body’s balancing mechanism, the middle ear – but its impact on sufferers is well known.
They experience sudden and recurring bouts of dizziness, each lasting up to 24 hours and accompanied by nausea and vomiting, with the first of these attacks usually occurring in a person’s mid-30s.
“Some people will get these attacks and will immediately drop to the floor and other people they can sense it is coming on,” Dr Brown, who heads the Meniere’s Laboratory, told AAP this week.
“Imagine being so dizzy that you have to call an ambulance and stay in hospital for a couple of days.
“… Or if you’ve ever had a big night out and then the room is spinning and you just want it to stop – well times that by 10.”
When a sufferer experienced one of these attacks, which they dub the “dizzy terror”, in public they may be dismissed by onlookers as simply being drunk.
Dr Brown said these attacks often occurred in clusters. Stress could bring on an attack as could a diet high in salt while sufferers would also experience worsening hearing and balance problems over time.
It was also common for sufferers to report feeling increasingly sensitive to certain sounds and changes in atmospheric pressure.
Sufferers could feel uncomfortable driving in a car with the window down while routine sounds could also have a “distressing” effect.
“When you have a complex hearing loss, your brain reorganises itself,” Dr Brown said.
“They’ll flush the toilet and say that sounds awful … it can have a high-pitched wheeling. It won’t sound right.”
Dr Brown said this all added up to a debilitating condition that was enough to force some sufferers out of the workforce.
While 50,000 Australians were diagnosed with the condition the total number of sufferers could be triple this as the condition was often confused for migraine or vertigo.
Diagnosing was also no guarantee of fixing the problem, Dr Brown said, as conventional treatments alleviate the dizzy spell but do not halt the decline in hearing or balance.
“Clinicians all know about it, and know of Meniere’s sufferers, but because they can’t really help them it gets put to the side,” Dr Brown said.
“People have been studying it for the last 100 years and they drop it because they think that’s old Meniere’s Disease, no one is ever going to come up with an explanation for that or come up with a cure.
“It’s done with – we can’t work it out.”
The Meniere’s Laboratory was established last year as the culmination of about eight years of fundraising by the Meniere’s Research Fund, a group formed by Australian sufferers.
Dr Brown’s work is now focused on trying to find an improved diagnostic test for identifying excess fluid in the ear and determining the effects of the resultant build-up of pressure.
Recent studies overseas had made some headway in understanding what a sufferer experienced at the height of a dizzy attack, he said, including a spike in sensitivity for the middle ear without temporary deafness.
Dr Brown said there was a growing global momentum behind the research effort, with the aim of pushing treatment to the next step.
“The you-beaut treatment would stop the attack and prevent the degeneration of hearing and balance,” he said.
“.. And that would be a god-send for these people, allowing them to get back on with their normal lives.
“These people are distraught with the fear of when one of these attacks is going to come on.”
Chiropractics for the symptoms of Meniere’s disease
Table of Contents
You can find several posts on this blog regarding the use of Chiropractics for Meniere’s disease and how it may help your reduce your symptoms. It may be worth visiting a reputable cervical certified Chiropractor and have them check your spine and neck, to see if your symptoms are cervical in origin. A significantly sizable enough number of sufferers have contacted Meniere’s Help over many years and reported significant improvements with their symptoms after treatment for this to be ignored or dismissed.
Chiropractic Rehabilitation in the Treatment of Dizziness
By Donald Murphy, DC, DACAN and Craig Liebenson, DC
Dizziness is a common complaint in the chiropractic office. It is a generic term that must be clearly defined and its cause properly characterized and diagnosed for appropriate treatment to be implemented. It is a complaint that is often treatable via chiropractic manipulative and myofascial/rehabilitative procedures.
The first stage in the workup of a complaint of dizziness is to accurately identify the actual nature of the symptom. There are essentially four symptoms that can be described by a patient as being “dizziness.”
lightheadedness — The patient feels “not right in the head.”
presyncope — The patient feels “faint.”
disequilibrium — The patient feels off balance, often as if they are being “pulled to one side” and feels as if they could easily fall over.
vertigo — The patient feels as if they are spinning or the world is spinning around them. This can often occur in acute attacks, or it can be a constant, low level feeling. This can be rotatory or can occur in a sagittal plane.
Karel Lewit, MD, one of the foremost authorities in the world on locomotor system dysfunction and its effects on equilibrium, states: “It is important to stress that a cervical factor may be present in all forms of vertigo and dizziness … in no field is manipulation more effective than in the treatment of disturbances of equilibrium.”1
Because the entire locomotor as well as vestibular and visual system is involved in the regulation of equilibrium, all factors must be considered in the patient who suffers from disorders of this system. Michel Norre, noted authority in the field of vertigo and disequilibrium, states: “The dysfunction causing vertigo concerns the total balance function and not the inner ear function alone.”2 The types of dizziness that are generally most likely to fall into the chiropractic rehabilitative realm are disequilibrium and vertigo.
Disequilibrium is most often cervical in origin, as has been demonstrated by Hulse.3 It has been shown in several studies that the cervical spine plays a very strong role in the body’s regulation of equilibrium sense.4-7 In fact, Guyton7 states that the cervical spine plays the most important role in this regulation. One test that can be useful in determining whether a complaint of disequilibrium is of cervical origin is Hautant’s test.1 Have the patient sitting, preferably in a chair with back support to prevent falling, and holding their arms straight out in front of them, palms down. Have them close their eyes and observe for drifting of their arms to one side. Repeat this with the head turned to the right and to the left and often the deviation will become more marked, particularly when the head is turned to the direction of cervical joint dysfunction. This tests the ability of the cervical spine to appropriately regulate muscle tone in the extremities by properly eliciting the tonic neck reflexes.
Vertigo, as stated earlier, is by definition an abnormal sensation of movement, usually spinning. Attacks of vertigo can be elicited by various maneuvers or can be constant. When the vertigo is caused by Meniere’s disease it is accompanied by unilateral tinnitus and hearing loss. Benign positional vertigo is caused by dysfunction of the labyrinthine apparatus in the inner ear and attacks are elicited by changes of head position in space, as can be tested for utilizing the Barany maneuver. Cervicogenic vertigo also occurs in attacks and these attacks are elicited by changes of head position relative to the trunk. This can be tested for by utilizing the rotating stool test,8 wherein the patient sits on a stool that has the ability to rotate and is told to rotate their entire body from side to side while the doctor holds their head in position, thus restricting movement to the cervical spine and avoiding stimulation of the inner ear mechanism. If this elicits an attack of vertigo, it is most likely of cervical origin.
Vetebrobasilar insufficiency can cause vertigo, though with this disorder the vertigo almost never occurs by itself, rather being generally accompanied by other symptoms of brainstem ischemia, such as numbness in the ipsilateral face and/or contralateral body; nausea; vomiting; loss of consciousness; visual problems; difficulty walking; incoordination of the extremities; tinnitus; speech problems and nystagmus. The symptoms can be provoked by rotation of the cervical spine, although this is not always the case, and there may be a history of TIA. Vertigo caused by other brainstem diseases such as CP angle tumor can cause a constant, low intensity vertiginous sensation that increases in intensity as the tumor grows.
So it can be seen that before a referral or management strategy can be formulated, there must be accurate diagnosis of the cause of the disequilibrium or vertigo. There are various treatment/rehabilitative approaches that can be taken to restore normal function and eliminate the complaint.
When vertigo or disequilibrium is caused by dysfunction in the cervical spine or labyrinythine apparatus, it is most often treatable in the chiropractic setting. Optimum function of the cervical spine is essential to the recovery from these disorders regardless of the cause. Lewit10 showed that patients with Meneire’s syndrome can be effectively treated with manipulation, demonstrating that 79 percent of 21 cases showed an “excellent” outcome. Fitz-Ritson8 showed that patients with posttramatic vertigo of cervical origin treated with chiropractic manipulative, myofascial and rehabilitative procedures experienced a 90.2 percent success rate. Treatment must not only be directed towards the correction of joint dysfunction via manipulation, but must also be directed toward muscular dysfunction, such as myofascial trigger points and muscle tightness.11 In addition, faulty movement patterns that involve the cervical spine, including cervical flexion, sit-to-stand, breathing and swallowing12 must be detected and corrected. This is especially important because often these patients will have imbalance in activity between the deep neck flexors and the upper cervical extensors. Examining for this imbalance and correcting it through rehabilitative procedures will help the patient improve locomotor system function as a whole and prevent treatment resistance and recurrence of the problem.
Meniere’s disease and upper cervical chiropractic care: Video
Help other sufferers. Do you have experience with chiropractics and Meniere’s disease? Tell us all about it in the comments box below or email Mike at meniereshelp@gmail.com
Can the symptoms of Meniere’s Disease be caused by Dental Work?
Table of Contents
It is relatively common for people to contact Meniere’s Disease Help who had dental work done prior to the onset of their symptoms, have dental problems, or who have amalgam fillings. All of these have been linked to Meniere’s.
Meniere’s disease caused by root canal work is also a possibility. Root canals toxicity is a controversial topic. Dentistry in general calls the possible negative effect on health throughout the body from root canals a myth.
However biological dentists do not agree. Root canal removal is a common treatment carried out by biological dentists.
In addition to that Meniere’s Help often receives emails from Meniere’s sufferers who claim the onset of their symptoms followed root canal work.
A paper at ScienceDirect.Com discusses the possible links with dental issues and Meniere’s disease here is a summary:
Meniere’s disease may be caused by common intraosseous dental pathology
– Diagnosis using the comparative compression sign
Summary “Meniere’s disease has been ascribed to a disturbance of the vestibular apparatus or its connections within the Central Nervous System.
Several hypotheses have been advanced regarding its aetiopathogenesis, but treatments based on these hypotheses have often not produced the desired results.
Two cases are described where common intraosseous pathology within the lower half of the functional face, i.e. within the mandible and maxillae, was shown to be the cause of Meniere’s disease.
Together, these cases contributed to the chance discovery of the comparative compression sign which, when able to be elicited, may be considered pathognomonic for a dental origin of the condition.
It is suggested that, in addition to other hypothesized causes involving the vestibular apparatus and the CNS, Meniere’s disease and vertigo may also be caused by common, readily-identifiable intraosseous dental pathology.
These unexpected findings open up a new field for future research.”
a23 Rechov Atzmon, Ramat Hasharon 47287, Israel
Root canal toxicity and the symptoms of Meniere’s disease
Studies have shown that there is a link between gum disease and serious chronic health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, respiratory disease, and cancer, and emerging evidence has shown that root canals pose the same health risks.
It would seem root canal capping can trap toxic bacteria in the gum. The bacteria would normally not be a problem but the root canal can trap it. That’s when it becomes toxic and cannot escape. It has to go somewhere and this leads to problems.
Possible effects can be:
Infection after root canal: After the root canal procedure, the infection can progress inside or outside the location that the root canal was performed
Accumulation of unwanted materials: Cholesterol crystals can accumulate and irritate the tissues where the root canal was done, as well as scar tissue or cystic lesions
Immune system response: The procedure can cause an overactive immune response in your body, causing negative health impacts
Toxic materials used in filling: Many dentists use materials such as amalgam to fill the tooth after a root canal is performed, which can be detrimental to your health due to mercury and other metals in the filling material
It is claimed that the health of your mouth can be directly linked to the health of your overall body.
Studies have shown that there is a link between gum disease and serious chronic health conditions such as diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, respiratory disease, and cancer, and emerging evidence has shown that root canals pose the same health risks.
Dr. Gerald Smith, International Center for Nutritional Research:
15 years of vertigo caused by a root canal treated tooth
“Duncan A. suffered sever vertigo for fifteen years. He had to sleep with two pillows to counteract the spinning sensation. He was also unable to fly.
Medical examination at Johns Hopkins University, Hershey Medical Center and numerous neurologists failed to diagnose Duncan’s underlying cause.
Duncan came in for an extended examination. A major red flag went up when Duncan mentioned he had a lower left second molar that was treated with root canal therapy.
When the tooth was tested by means of an energetic technique it showed the presence of infection with cytomegalovirus. Also this same virus was present in his left inner ear, which was the same side Duncan experienced his vertigo.
Treatment involved specific nutrients and home treatment with his own Rife machine. Two months into treatment his left ear popped open and his vertigo vanished. Duncan has been free of all his vertigo symptoms for the past several years.”
According to ClinicalTrials.gov a new set of trials are set to begin at Osaka University, related to stress and Meniere’s Disease.
One important aspect of this is that, while many doctors in the west may dismiss stress as a major factor the researchers in Osaka had this to say,
“Attacks in Meniere’s disease, characterized by vertigo and hearing loss, are well known to occur repeatedly under stressed environment.
Hitherto, its pathology was revealed to be inner ear hydrops through human temporal bone studies in 1938″
Stress And Meniere’s Disease – The Vicious Cycle
A 2013 study published in Acta Otolarygol, ‘Psychological condition in patients with intractable Meniere’s disease’ states:
“Physicians should consider additional treatment strategies for Meniere’s disease patients with a long history of disease and hearing loss in the secondary affected ear and also provide psychological support regarding future progressive bilateral hearing loss.”
This conclusion was based on the following:
“Between 1998 and 2009, we enrolled 207 patients with intractable Meniere’s disease in this prospective study. We used the Cornell Medical Index and the Self-rating Depression Scale to evaluate their psychological condition.
We also obtained demographic and background information relating to sex, age, duration of disease, vertigo frequency, hearing level in bilateral sides, and plasma vasopressin level.”
Vasopressin is stress hormone that was was initially viewed as strictly a beneficial hormone to help prevent water loss. It is also referred to as ADH, meaning ‘anti- diuretic hormone’.
This means when stress produces this hormone fluid is being retained. The most common medicine to given to Meniere’s patients is a diuretic. This is meant help reduce the fluid in the inner ear causing Meniere’s.
Vasopressin is a very damaging hormone to the body. It has been implicated as a mediator of renal injury, and acute effects including glomerular hyperfiltration and albuminuria.
Side effects of producing vasopressin include:
slow heartbeat
dizziness
headache
nausea
vomiting
Poor blood flow has been linked to Meniere’s disease. The vicious cycle of stress = Meniere’s = stress = Meniere’s is well known. If you have Meniere’s disease, there will be accompanying high stress and anxiety and in turn this will produce more Meniere’s symptoms.
Dizziness, headaches, nausea and vomiting with vertigo are all symptoms of Meniere’s.
Fight or flight fear literally turns the immune system off. A constant drip feeding of fear then, must impair the immune system constantly.
Stress, anxiety, fear and anger are extremely detrimental to human cellular health. The body has to be constantly in a state of building, regeneration on cells. Stress hormone impairs that process and can result in disease states developing.
This is why people who are calm, happy, meditate often are usually much healthier than constantly stressed or angry people.
It would seem stress can be both a contributing trigger and perhaps a root cause of Meniere’s disease.
The results of the above mentioned study were:
“Neurosis and depression was diagnosed in 40.1% and 60.4%, respectively, of patients with intractable Meniere’s disease.
Our results showed that surgical treatment significantly improved vertigo and hearing ability in patients with no psychological symptoms compared with those exhibiting psychological symptoms.
Patients with a longer duration and worse hearing level in the secondary affected ear had a significantly higher incidence of mental illness than those with a shorter duration and better level of hearing.”
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